Cour de Marbre, VersaillesCour de Marbre, Versailles
Stretching out behind the palace are the famous gardens, theparterres, thetapis vert, the fountains and the grand canal, with the park of the Trianons off to the right.
Good fortune came to Louis XIV when he found André Le Notre, for it was he and no other who traced the general lines of the garden of the Versailles which was to be. He laid a generous hand upon the park and forest which had surrounded the manor of Louis XIII, and extended the garden to the furthermost limits of his ingenuity. Modifications were rapid, and from 1664 theparterresand the greensward took on entirely new forms and effects. The Parterre des Reservoirs became the Parterre du Nord, and an alley of four rows of lindens enclosed the park on all sides. The Parterre à Fleurs, or the Jardin du Roy, between the chateau and the Orangerie, was laid out anew.
By the following year the park began to takeon the homogeneity which it had hitherto lacked. The great Rondeau, as it was called, and which became later the Bassin du Dragon, was excavated, and the Jardin Bas, or the Nouveau Parterre, with an oval depression, was also planned.
At one end of the park was the celebrated Menagerie du Roy, where the rare and exotic animals collected by the monarch had "a palace more magnificent than the home of any other dumb animals in the world." This was the first period of formal garden construction at Versailles, and it was also the period when the first great impetus was given to sculptural decoration.
In 1679, following a journey in Italy, Le Notre took up again the work on the gardens at Versailles, devoting himself to the region south of the palace which hitherto had been ignored. This was Le Notre's most prolific period.
The creations at Versailles can be divided into two distinct epochs, that before 1670 and that coming after. After Le Notre's generous design, the king and queen were seemingly never satisfied with the endless plotting and planting which was carried on beneath the windows of the palace, and in many instances changed the colour schemes and even the outlines of Le Notre's original conceptions.
The Versailles of to-day is no longer the Versailles of Louis XIII, so far as the actual disposition of details goes. Then there was very little green grass and much sand and gravel, a scheme of decoration which entered largely into the seventeenth century garden. This refers principally to the general effect, for Le Notre made much use of the enclosing battery of lindens, chestnuts and elms of a majestic and patriarchal grandeur which have since been cut and replaced by smaller species of trees, or not replaced at all.
No sooner were the ornamental gardens planned at Versailles than the Potager du Roy, or fruit and vegetable garden, was created. This same garden exists to-day with almost its former outlines. Here a soil sufficiently humid, and yet sufficiently well drained, contributed not a little towards the success of this most celebrated of all kitchen gardens the world has known.
The work of installing a further system of artificial drainage was immediately begun, and the Eaux des Suisses was created, to take the place of a former stagnant pool near by. Undoubtedly it was a stupendous work, like all the projects launched with regard to Versailles, but, like the others, it was brought to a speedy and successful conclusion. The details of the historyof this royal vegetable garden are fully set forth in a work published in 1690 by the son of the designer, the Abbé Michel de la Quintinye, in two bulky volumes. "It was meet that a royal vegetable garden should have been designed by a 'Gentleman Gardener,'" said the faithful biographer in his foreword, and as such the man and the work are to be considered here.
The work was accomplished by the combined efforts of a gracious talent and the expenditure of much money, put at La Quintinye's disposition by his royal master, who had but to put his hand deep into the coffers of the royal treasury to draw it forth filled with gold. Critics have said that La Quintinye's ability stopped with the preparation of the soil, and with the design of the garden, rather than with the actual cultivation, but at all events it was he who made the garden possible.
La Quintinye adopted Arnauld d'Andilly's method of planting fruit treesen espalierby training them against a wall-like background, and to accomplish this divided the garden plot, which covered an area of eight hectares (twenty acres), into a great number of subdivisions enclosed by walls, in order to multiply to as great an extent as possible the available space to be used for theespaliers. Again, these same wallsserved to shelter certain varieties which were planted close against them. If this Potager du Roy was not actually the first garden of its class so laid out, it was certainly one of the most extensive and the most successful up to that time.
The great terraces of at least two metres in width surrounded the central garden, leaving a free area for the latter which approximated three hectares.
These terraces were divided into twenty-eight compartments, forming nine distinct varieties of gardens.
The celebrated gardener of Louis XIV sought not only to obtain fruits and vegetables of a superior quality and an abundant quantity, but was the first among his kind to produce early vegetables, orprimeurs, in any considerable quantity, and, by a process of forced culture, he was able to put upon the table of the monarch asparagus in December, lettuce in January, cauliflower in March and strawberries in April. All these may be found at the Paris markets to-day, and at these seasons, but the growing ofprimeursfor the Paris markets has become a great industry since the time it was first begun at Versailles.
Of asparagus La Quintinye said, "It is avegetable that only kings can ever hope to eat."
The Potager du Roy was begun in 1678, and completed in 1683. It cost, all told, one million one hundred and seventy thousand nine hundred and eighty-threelivresof which four hundred and sixty-seven thousand three hundred and sixty-four went for constructions in brick and stone, walls, enclosures and drains. Its annual maintenance (1685) amounted to twenty thousand nine hundred and ninety-ninelivres. The effort proved one of great benefit to its creator, for La Quintinye, at the completion of this work, received further commissions of a like nature from the Prince de Condé, the Duc de Montansier, Colbert, Fouquet and others.
So great a marvel was this vegetable garden at Versailles that it was the object of a pilgrimage of the Doge of Venice in 1685, and of the Siamese ambassadors in the following year. The garden has been preserved as an adjunct to Versailles up to the present day. For two centuries its product went to the "Service de Bouche" of the chief of state, that is, the royal dinner table; but in 1875 the Minister of Agriculture installed there the French National Horticultural College, which to-day, with a widened scope, has admitted ornamental plants and trees to this famous garden. Nevertheless the general outlines have beenpreserved, though certain of the terraces have disappeared, as well as many of the walls of the original enclosure, thus reducing the number of garden plots; in fact but sixteen distinctly defined gardens remain, including the Clos aux Asperges.
The Potager du Roy, VersaillesThe Potager du Roy, Versailles
The general lines of the garden design of Le Notre and Boyceau at Versailles are to be noted to-day, but if anything the maintenance of the gardens is hardly the equal of what it was in the time of Louis XIV and a seeming disaster has fallen upon Versailles as these lines are being written.
The military authorities have set aside, as a site for an aerostation camp, some twenty-five acres of the park near Rocquencourt. This is one of the loveliest parts, shaded by magnificent trees which, presumably, will have to be sacrificed, since, if left standing, they would certainly interfere with maneuvering with military aeroplanes, dirigibles and balloons.
At a time when deforestation is recognized to be one of the greatest dangers that menace a country's prosperity, one of its consequences being such inundations as those which recently devastated Paris and the Seine valley, it is regrettable that the forest surrounding Versailles should be depleted.
Furthermore, the realization of the project means a loss of revenue to the state which at present derives some sixty thousand francs a year from the farming lease of this portion of the park.
Therefore, for material considerations, as well as because Versailles and its surroundings should be preserved intact as a noble relic of one of the grandest periods of French history, one of the most beautiful creations of French genius, the project attributed to the military authorities is short-sighted. To diminish the attractions of Versailles would certainly prove an unwise policy, as the stream of tourists, which is the chief source of profit to Versailles and its population, would inevitably be diverted to some other channel.
Only a short time ago a Société des Amis de Versailles was created for the purpose of safeguarding its artistic and natural beauties. The government gave the organization its approbation and there is something delightfully ironical in the fact that the military authorities of the same government are planning to destroy what the society, fathered by the Ministère des Beaux Arts, was formed to preserve.
Another modern aspect of the park of Versailles was noted during the late winter when, after a sharp freeze, all the youth of Paris hadseemingly gone out to Versailles for the skating only to be met by a freshly-posted notice which read:
DefenseDe Patiner ParArrêté du 17 Decembre, 1849
These signs were posted here and there about the park, in the courtyard, on the postern gate, on trees, everywhere. The authorities were bound that there should be no flagrant violation of the order of 1849.
The Bassin de Latone, VersaillesThe Bassin de Latone, Versailles
"You see," said one of the park guardians, "c'est defendu; but as we are only two and the crowd is very large we can do nothing." This was evident. Thousands overran the Grand Canal, which at its greatest depth was scarcely more than a yard to the bottom, and so, despite of monarchial decree, Republican France still skates on the ornamental waters of Versailles when occasion offers.
"N'oubliez pas le petit balayeur, s'il vous plait," was as often heard as "Allez vous-en."
On the whole it was rather a picturesque sight. A thick haze hung over the now white "Tapis Vert," and the nude figures of the Bassin d'Apollon were clothed in a mantle of snow, while the white-robed statues of the Allée Royale,one could well believe, shivered as one passed.
The fountains of Versailles, the "Grands Eaux" and "Petits Eaux," which shoot their jets in air "semi-occasionally" for the benefit of Paris's "good papas" and their children, are distinctly popular features, and of an artistic worth neither less nor greater than most garden accessories of the artificial order. The fact that it costs something like ten thousand francs to "play" these fountains seems to be the chief memory which one retains of them in operation, unless it be the crowds which make the going and coming so uncomfortable.
The Orangerie lies just below the terrace of the Parterre du Midi, and a thousand or more non-bearing orange trees are scattered about. They are descendants of fifteenth century ancestors, it is claimed—but doubtfully.
The great basin of water known as the Eaux des Suisses was excavated by the Swiss Guard of Louis XIV to serve the useful purpose of irrigating the Potager du Roy, and as a decorative effect of great value to that part of the garden upon which faces the fourteen-hundred-foot front of the palace.
Still farther off towards the Bois de Satory, after crossing the Tapis Vert, lie the famous Bassins de Latone and Apollon, the Bassin duMiroir and, finally, the Grand Canal, with one transverse branch leading to the Menagerie (now the government stud-farm) and the other to the Trianons.
The Fountain of Neptune, VersaillesThe Fountain of Neptune, Versailles
The satellite palaces known as the Grand and Petit Trianons are, like the Palace of Versailles itself, of such an abounding historical interest that it were futile to attempt more than a mere intimation of their comparative rank and aspect.
The rather sprawling, one-story, horseshoe-shaped villa built by Louis XIV for Madame de Maintenon, and known as the Grand Trianon, was an architectural conception of Mansart's.
It is worth remarking that the Grand Trianon, to-day, is in a more nearly perfect state than it has been for long past, for the restorations lately made have removed certain interpolations manifestly out of place.
It is due to M. de Nolhac, the Conservateur du Musée de Versailles, that this happy amelioration has been brought about and that Mansart's admirable work is again as it was in the days of Madame de Maintenon and those of the later Napoleon I.
In spite of all this the Trianon of to-day is not what it was in the eighteenth century. "Madame de Maintenon," said de Musset,"made of Versailles an oratory, but La Pompadour turned it into a boudoir." He also called the Trianon: "a tiny chateau of porcelain." It was, too, the boudoir of Madame de Montespan.
Louis XV, too, built, or furnished, discreet boudoirs of this order on every hand. More than one great gallery in which his elders had done big things he divided and subdivided into minute apartments and papered the walls, or painted them, all colours of the rainbow, or hung them with silks or velvets.
"Don't you think my little apartment shows good taste," he asked one day of the Comtesse de Séran at Versailles.
"Not at all," she replied, "I would much rather that the walls were hung in blue."
That particular apartment was in rose, but, since blue was the favourite colour of the monarch, the reply was but flattering. The next time that his friend, the Comtesse, appeared on the scene the apartment had all been done over in blue.
The monarch soon began to turn his attention to the gardens. Bowers, labyrinths and vases and statues were inexplicably mixed as in a maze. He began to have the "gout pastoral," his biographer has said, a vogue that Madame du Barryand Marie Antoinette came in time to push to its limits.
The king was too ready to admire all that was suggested, all that was offered, and the ultimate effect was—well, it was the opposite of what he hoped it to be, though doubtless he did not realize it.
Petit TrianonPetit Trianon
In the garden of the Grand Trianon is a great basin with a cascade flowing down over a sort of a high altar arrangement in red and white marble called the Buffet de l'Architecture, and evolved by Mansart. This architect certainly succeeded much better with his purely architectural conceptions than he did with interpolated decorative elements intended to relieve a formal landscape.
The Petit Trianon, the pride of Louis XV, was designed by the architect Gabriel, and its reigning goddess was Marie Antoinette. Souvenirs of the unhappy queen are many, but the caretakers are evidently bored with their duties and hustle you through the apartments with scant ceremony that they may doze again undisturbed in their corners.
The garden of the Petit Trianon is a veritableJardin Anglais, that is, the decorative portion, where sweeps and curves, as meaningless as those one sees on banknotes and no more decorative, are found in place of the majestic lines of the formal garden when laid out after the French manner.
TheHameau, where is the dairy where the queen played housewife and shepherdess, is just to the rear of this bijou palace and looks stagy and unreal enough to be the wings and back-drop of a pastoral play.
Near Versailles was the Chateau de Clagny, with a garden laid out by Le Notre, quite the rival of many better known. Of it Madame de Sévigné wrote: "It is the Palais d'Armide; you know the manner of Le Notre; here he has done his best."
The Couvent des Recollettes, just across the Bois de Satory, was built by Louis XIV out ofregard for thereligieuxwhom he displaced from an edifice which stood upon a plot which was actually needed for the palace gardens. The Chateaux of Noisy and Molineaux were also affiliated with Versailles.
The rest of the surroundings and accessories of Versailles are mere adjunctive details of those chief features here mentioned. To catalogue them even would be useless since they are all set down in the guidebooks.
Saint Germain has not the popularity of Versailles, nor the charm of Fontainebleau, but it is more accessible than either, and, if less known and less visited by the general mass of tourists, it is all the more delightful for that.
Saint Germain, the chateau, the town and the forest, possess a magnificent site. Behind is a wooded background, and before one are the meanderings of the Seine which in the summer sunlight is a panorama which is to be likened to no other on earth. Across the river bottom run the great tree-lined roadways, straight as the proverbial flight of the arrow, while on the horizon, looking from the celebrated terrace, one sees to-day the silhouetted outline of Paris with the Tour Eiffel and the dome of the Sacré Cœur as the culminating points.
The town itself is ugly and ill-paved, and heavy-booted dragoons make a hideous noise as they clank along to and from the cavalry barracks all through the day and night. Neitherare scorching automobiles making their ways to Trouville and Dieppe over the "Route des Quarante Sous" a pleasant feature. One can ignore all these things, however, for what is left is of a superlative charm.
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Saint Germain-en-Laye in the first stages of French history was but a vast extent of forestwhich under Charlemagne came to the possession of the monks of the Abbaye de Saint Germain-des-Prés. The first royal palace here was built by King Robert in the tenth century, practically upon the site of the present edifice. In the eleventh century there came into being another royal dwelling, and in the twelfth century Louis-le-Gros built a chateau-fort as a protection to the royal residence and monastery. This did not prevent the Black Prince from very nearly burning them down on one of his bold raids, but by 1367, Charles V re-erected the "castel" of Saint Germain-en-Laye.
The English, by coercion, induced a monk of a neighbouring establishment at Nanterre to deliver up a set of false keys by which the great gates of the castle were surreptitiously opened, and, for a time, the descendants of the Conqueror held possession.
The establishment of Charles V in no way satisfying the artistic ambitions of Francis I, that monarch gave the task of reconstruction to the architect Pierre Chambiges, in 1539, preserving only the Saint Chapelle of Saint Louis and the donjon.
The building must have gone forward with an extreme rapidity for at the architect's death, in 1544, it had reached nearly the level of the rooftop.
Chambiges' successor was his son-in-law, Guillaume Guillain, who, without changing the primitive plan, completed the work in 1548.
Saint Germain, above the first story, is essentially a construction of bricks, but the effect is even now, as Chambiges originally intended, an edifice with its main constructive elements of lower sustaining walls and buttresses of stone binding together the slighter fabric, or filling, above. Although it is Renaissance through and through, Saint Germain shows not the slightest reminiscence of anything Italian and must be considered entirely as an achievement of French genius.
This edifice of Francis I was more a fortress than a palace in spite of its decorative features, and Henri II, desiring something more of a luxurious royal residence, began what the historians and savants know as the Chateau Neuf—the palace of to-day which stands high on the hill overlooking the winding Seine, to which seducing stream the gardens originally descended in terraces.
Chiefly it is to Henri IV that this structure owes its distinction, for previously work went on but intermittently, and very slowly. Henri IV brought the work to completion and made the chateau his preferred and most prolongedplace of residence, as indeed did his successor.
It is the Chateau Neuf of the time of Henri IV which is to-day known as the Palais de Saint Germain-en-Laye. Of the Vieux Chateau only some fragmentary walls and piles of débris, the Pavillon Henri IV, and, in part, the old royal chapel remain.
Actually the structure of to-day includes that part of the Hotel du Pavillon Henri IV which is used as a restaurant.
Henri IV and Louis XIII gave Saint Germain its first greatéclatas a suburban place of sojourn, and from the comings and goings of the court of that time there gradually grew up the present city of twenty thousand inhabitants; not all of them of courtly manners, as one learns from a recollection of certain facts of contemporary modern history.
During the days when Mazarin actually held the reins of state the court was frequently at Saint Germain. Louis XIV was born here, and until Versailles and Marly came into being he made it his principal dwelling.
It was in one of the magnificent apartments, too, midway between the angle turrets of the façade, Louis XIII ended his unhappy existence in 1642. His own private band of musicians played a "De Profundis" of his own composition to waft his soul on its long journey.
The chroniclers describe one of the monarch's last conversations as follows: "When they transport my body to Paris after my soul has flown, Laporte, remember that place where the road turns under the hill; it is a rough road, Laporte, and will surely shake my bones sadly if the driver does not go slowly."
Those who have journeyed out from Paris to Saint Germain by road in this later century will appreciate the necessity for the admonition.
Louis XIV, unlike Louis XIII, detested Saint Germain beyond words, because the towers of the Abbaye de Saint Denis, where he was destined one day to be buried, were visible from the terrace. Louis XV was not so particular for he was so morbid that he even loved, as he claimed himself, the scent of new-made graves.
The arrival of Anne d'Autriche and the royal family at Saint Germain during the war of the Fronde was one of the most dramatic incidents of the period. They had travelled half the night, coming from the Palais Royal only to find a palace awaiting them which was unheated and unfurnished though the time was mid-January. Always drear and gaunt it was immeasurably so on this occasion. Mazarin had made no provision for the queen's arrival; there, were neither beds, tables nor linen in their properplaces, no servants, no attendants of any kind, only the guardians of the palace. The queen was obliged to take rest from her fatigue on a folding camp bedstead, without covering of any kind. The princes fared no better, actually sleeping on the floor.
There were plenty of mirrors and much gold gingerbread on the walls and ceilings, but no furniture. The personal belongings which the court had brought with them were few. No one had a change of clothing even; those worn one day were washed the next. However the queen good-naturedly smiled through it all. She called it "an escapade which can hardly last a week."
All Paris was by this time crying "Vive la Fronde": "Mort à Mazarin": but it proved to be something more than a little affair of a week, as we now know.
At this period, when Anne d'Autriche was practically a prisoner at Saint Germain, the picture made by the old chateau against its forest background was undeniably more imposing than that which one sees to-day. The glorious forest was not then hidden by rows of banal roof-tops, and the dull drabs of barracks and prisons.
In the warm spring mornings the glitteringfaçade of the chateau was brilliant as a diamond against its setting, and the radiating avenues of the park leading from the famous terrace stretched out into infinite vistas that were most alluring. This effect, fortunately, is not wholly lost to-day.
At night things were as idyllic as by day. The queen and her ladies, relieved of the dreary presence of the king who still remained at Paris, revelled in an unwonted freedom. Concerts, suppers and dances were the rule and moonlight cavalcades to the heart of the forest, or promenades on foot the length of the terrace, and by some romantically disposed couples far beyond, gave a genuine "begone, dull care" aspect to court life which was not at all possible in the capital.
The following picture, taken from a court chronicle, might apply as well to-day if one makes due allowance for a refulgence of myriad lamps gleaming out Parisward as night draws in.
"It is a rare moonlight night. The queen and her ladies have emerged late on the stately terrace of Henri IV which borders upon the forest and extends for nearly a league along the edge of the height upon which stands the chateau.
"The queen and her brother-in-law, Gaston, Duc d'Orleans, have seated themselves somewhat apart from the rest beside the stone balustrade which overlooks the steep descent to the plain below. Vineyards line the hillside and the Seine flows far beneath, the fertile river-bottom rich with groves and orchards, villas and gardens. Still more distant sweeps away the great plain wrapped in dark shadows punctuated here and there with great splotches of moonlight. Of the great city beyond (the Paris of to-day, whose myriad glow-worm lights actually do lend an additional charm) not a vestige is to be seen. Scarcely a lantern marks the existence of a living soul in the vast expanse below, but the moon, high in the heavens, plots out the entire landscape with a wonderful impressiveness, and the stars topping the forest trees to the rear and the heights which rise on the distant horizon lend their quota of romanticism, and, as if by their scintillations, mark the almost indiscernible towers of the old Abbey of Saint Denis to the left.
"'Oh, what a lovely night,' said the queen to her companion. Again it is the old chronicler who speaks. 'Can the world ever appear so calm and peaceful elsewhere?'"
This Terrasse de Henri IV, so called, is one of the most splendid and best-known terraces in Europe, and is noted for its extent as wellas for its marvellous point of view, the whole panorama Parisward being spread out before one as if on a map, a view which extends from the Chateau de Maisons on the left to the Aqueduct de Marly and the heights of Louveciennes on the right, including the Bois de Vesinet, Mont Valerian, Montmartre and the whole Parisian panorama as far as the Coteaux de Montmorency.
The Valley of the Seine, from the Terrace at Saint GermainThe Valley of the Seine, from the Terrace at Saint Germain
This terrace, too, was the project and construction of Le Notre in 1672. It is two and a half kilometres in length and thirty metres in width, upheld by a stone retaining wall which is surmounted by a balustrade. It extends from the Pavillon Henri IV to a gun battery well within the confines of the forest. Entrance from the precincts of the palace is by the great ornamental iron gateway known as the Grille Royale, from which an alleyed row of lindens leads to the heart of the forest.
The record of another merry party at Saint Germain is that which recounts that summer evening when the king and court scuttled about the park enjoying themselves as only royalty can—when some one else pays the bills. The terrace, the gravelled walks and the alleyed paths of the forest all led to charming and discreet rendezvous.
So preoccupied was every one on this particularoccasion that the merry-makers had hardly a thought for their king, who, left to his own devices, sought out four maids of honour gossiping in a bower, and, taking the mischief-loving Lauzan into his confidence, pried upon them in the ambush of the night. They were gossiping over the dancers at the ball of the night before when one of them proclaimed her fancy for the agility and grace of the king above all others. It was the first expression of "La Vallière" since she had come timidly to court. The rest is an idyll which is found set forth in all the history books at considerable length, and at this particular moment it was a genuine idyll, for the king had not then become the debauched roué that he was in later life.
After Anne d'Autriche, Henriette, the widow of Charles I of England, found at Saint Germain a comfortable and luxurious refuge.
From 1661 onward Louis XIV made frequent visits to Saint Germain and was so taken with the charms of the neighbourhood and the immediate site that he conjured six and a half million francs out of his Civil List, in addition to his regular stipend, for the upkeep of this palace alone. This was robbery: modern graft pales before this; candelabra by the pound and writing tables by the square yard were known before the days of machine politicians.
James II of England, in 1688, found a hospitable refuge at Saint Germain, thanks to Louis XIV, and died within the palace walls in 1701, as did his wife, Maria d'Este, in 1718.
Louis XV and Louis XVI gave Saint Germain scarce a thought, and under the Empire it became a cavalry school, and later, under the Restoration, sinking lower still, it merited only the denomination of a barracks. Its culminating fall arrived when it was turned into a penitentiary.
Napoleon III, with finer instincts, here installed a museum, and restorations and rebuilding having gone on intermittently since that time the palace has now taken on a certain pretence to glory. Practically the palace in its present form is a restoration, not entirely a new building, but a rebuilding of an old one, first begun under the competent efforts of the architect Eugene Millet, who sought to reëstablish the edifice as it was under Francis I. The great tower has been preserved but the corner pavilions of the period of Louis XIV have been demolished in accord with the carrying out of this plan.
For forty years Saint Germain has been in a state of restoration, and like the restoration of Pierrefonds it has swallowed up fantastic sums. The western façade has been rebuilt from the chapel to the entrance portal and the last ofMansart's pavilions, which he built to please either his own fancy or that of Louis XIV, have been demolished. Mansart himself made way with the oldtourellesand the balustrade which rounded off the angles of the walls of the main buildings and substituted a series of heavy, uglymaisonettes, more like the bastions of a fortress than any adjunct to a princely dwelling.
The courtyard of the chateau is curiously disposed; "so that it may receive the sun at all times," was the claim of its designer. It, too, has been brought back to the state in which it was originally conceived and shorn of its encumbering outhouses and odds and ends which served their purposes well enough when it was a barracks or a prison, but which were a desecration to anything called by so dignified a name as a chateau or a palace. This courtyard is to-day as it was when the lords and ladies in the train of Charles IX strolled and even gambolled therein.
The Chapelle de Saint Louis (1240) is in every way remarkable, especially with respect to its great rose-window, which was found by Millet to have been walled up by Louis XIV.
The military museum of to-day, which is enclosed by the palace walls, possesses a remarkable collection of its kind, but has no intimate lien upon the history of the palace.
Theparterrebefore the palace is cut off from the forest of Saint Germain by three ornate iron gates. It was relaid, a transformation from designs originally conceived in 1676, by Le Notre, modified in 1750 and much reduced in size and beauty in the nineteenth century, though later enlarged by taking three hectares of ground from the forest and turning them into the accepted form of an English garden.
A peninsula of a superficial area of over ten thousand acres snugly enfolded in one of the great horseshoe bends of the Seine contains the Forêt de Saint Germain. A line drawn across the neck of the peninsula from Saint Germain to Poissy, following the Route de Poissy, completely cuts off this tongue of land which is as wild and wooded to-day as in the times of Francis, the Henris and the Louis.
Theroutesandalléesof the forest are traced with regularity and precision, and historians have written them down as of a length of nearly four hundred leagues, a statement which a glance at any map of the forest will well substantiate.
High upon its plateau sits this historic wildwood, for the most part of a soil dry and sandy, with here and there some greatmamelon(Druidical or Pagan, as the case may be) rising somewhat above the average level. Francis I, huntsman and lover of art and nature, did much to preserve this great forest, and Louis XIV in his time developed its system of roads and paths, "chiefly to make hunting easy," says history, though it is difficult to follow this. At all events the forest remains to-day the most extensive unspoiled breathing-spot of its class near Paris.
Within this maze of paths and alleys are many famed historic spots, the Chêne Saint Fiacre, the Croix de Noailles, the Croix Saint Simon, the Croix du Main (erected in 1709 in honour of the son of Louis XIV), the Étoile des Amazones, the Patte d'Oie, the Chêne du Capitaine and many more which are continually referred to in the history of the palace, the forest of Saint Germain-en-Laye, and of the Abbaye de Poissy.
The forest is not wholly separated from the mundane world for occasionally a faint echo of the Rouen railway is heard, a toot from a river tug-boat bringing coal up-river to Paris, the strident notes of automobile horns, or that of a hooting steam-tram which scorches along the principal roadway over which state coaches of kings and courtiers formerly rolled. The contrast is not particularly offensive, but the railway threatens to make further inroads, so one hardly knows the future that may be in store for the patriarch oaks and elms and chestnuts which make up this secular wildwood. Their ages may not in all cases approach those of the great Fontainebleau trees, and in point of fact the forest is by no means as solitary, nor ever was. One of the most celebrated, certainly one of the most spectacular, duels of history took place in the park at Saint Germain-en-Laye.
Gui Chabot de Jarnac lived a prodigal and profligate life at the expense—it was said—of the favours of the Duchesse d'Étampes. The dauphin, Henri, making an accusation, deemed wholly uncalled for, a "duel judiciaire" took place, with La Châtaigneraie as the dauphin's substitute as adversary of de Jarnac who sought no apology but combat.
It was because Henri meantime had become king and issued his first Letters Patent to his council concerning the "duel judiciaire," whereby he absolved himself of the right to partake, that he appointed his dear friend François de Vivonne, "Seigneur de la Châtaigneraie," to play the rôle for him.
Unfortunately the young man could not justify by victory the honour of his king and before the monarch and the assembled court he was laid low by his adversary.
This was one of the last of the "duels judiciaires"in France. What Saint Louis and Philippe-le-Bel had vainly sought to suppress, the procedure having cost at least a hundred thousandlivres, was practically accomplished by Henri II by a stroke of the pen.
Out from Paris, on the old Route d'Espagne, running from the capital to the frontier, down which rolled the royal cortèges of old, lie Maintenon and its famous chateau, some sixty odd kilometres from Paris and twenty from Rambouillet.
Just beyond Versailles, on the road to Maintenon, lies the trim little townlet of Saint Cyr, known to-day as the West Point of France, the military school founded by Napoleon I giving it its chief distinction.
Going back into the remote past one learns that the village grew up from a foundation of Louis XIV, who bought for ninety-one thousandlivres"a chateau and a convent for women," that Madame de Maintenon might establish a girls' school therein. She reserved an apartment for herself, and one suspects indeed that it was simply another project of the Widow Scarron to have a place of rendezvous near the capital. Certainly under the circumstances, taking into consideration the good that she was doing for orphaned girls, she might at least have been allowed the right of a roof to shelter her when she wished. She was absolutely dominant within, though never actually in residence for any length of time. It was here that "Esther" and "Athalie," which Racine had composed expressly for Madame de Maintenon's pensionnaires, were produced for the first time.
When not actually living at Saint Cyr it was Madame de Maintenon's custom to come hither from Paris each day, arriving between seven and eight in the morning, passing the day and returning to town for the evening, much as a celebrated American millionaire journalist, whose country-house overlooks the famous convent garden, does to-day.
Madame de Maintenon actually went into retirement at Saint Cyr upon the death of LouisXIV, and for four years, until her death, never left it. She died from old age, rather than from any grave malady, in this "Maison d'Education," which she had inaugurated, and was buried in the chapel, beneath an elaborate tomb which the Duc de Noailles, who married her niece, caused to be erected. The tomb was destroyed during the Revolution and the "Maison Royale de Saint Cyr," of which nothing had been changed since its foundation, was suppressed, the edifice itself being pillaged and the remains of Madame de Maintenon sadly profaned, finally to be recovered and deposited again in the chapel where a simple black marble slab marks them in these graven words:
Cy-Git Madame De Maintenon1635-1719-1836
Napoleon I established the École Militaire at Saint Cyr, from which are graduated each year more than four hundred subaltern officers.
The ancient gardens of Madame de Maintenon's time now form the "Champs de Mars," or drill ground, of the military school.
South from Saint Cyr runs the great international highroad, the old Route Royale of the monarchy. It rises and falls, but mostly straight as the flight of the crow, until it crosses the great National Forest of Rambouillet. Following thevalley of the Eure almost to its headwaters it finally comes to Maintenon, a town of a couple of thousand souls, whose most illustrious inhabitant was that granddaughter of Theodore-Agrippa d'Aubigné, named Françoise, and who came in time to be the Marquise de Maintenon.
The Chateau de Maintenon was royal in all but name. The Tresorier des Finances under Louis XI, Jean Cottereau (a public official who made good it seems, since he also served in the same capacity for Charles VIII, Louis XII, and Francis I), had a single daughter, Isabeau, who, in 1526, married Jacques d'Angennes, who at the time was already Seigneur de Rambouillet.
As a dot this daughter acquired the lands of Maintenon. The property was afterwards sold to the Marquis de Villeray, from whom Louis XIV bought it in 1674 and disposed of it as a royal gift to Françoise d'Aubigné, the fascinator of kings, who was afterwards to become (in 1688) Madame La Marquise de Maintenon.
This ambitious woman subsequently married her niece to the Duc d'Ayen, son of the Maréchal de Noailles, and as a marriage portion—or possibly to avoid unpleasant consequences—turned over the property of Maintenon to the young bride and her husband to whose family, the Noailles, it has ever since belonged.
To-day the Duc and Duchesse de Noailles make lengthy stays in this delightful seigneurial dwelling, and since the apartments are full to overflowing of historical souvenirs of their family it may be truly said that their twentieth century life is to some considerable extent in accord with the traditions of other days.